But above any other factor, and perhaps greater than
all of them combined in contributing to the high maintenance
efficiency attained in these countries must be placed
the standard of living to which the industrial classes
have been compelled to adjust themselves, combined
with their remarkable industry and with the most intense
economy they practice along every line of effort and
of living.

Almost every foot of land is made to contribute material
for food, fuel or fabric. Everything which can
be made edible serves as food for man or domestic
animals. Whatever cannot be eaten or worn is
used for fuel. The wastes of the body, of fuel
and of fabric worn beyond other use are taken back
to the field; before doing so they are housed against
waste from weather, compounded with intelligence and
forethought and patiently labored with through one,
three or even six months, to bring them into the most
efficient form to serve as manure for the soil or
as feed for the crop. It seems to be a golden
rule with these industrial classes, or if not golden,
then an inviolable one, that whenever an extra hour
or day of labor can promise even a little larger return
then that shall be given, and neither a rainy day
nor the hottest sunshine shall be permitted to cancel
the obligation or defer its execution.

I

FIRST GLIMPSES OF JAPAN

We left the United States from Seattle for Shanghai,
China, sailing by the northern route, at one P. M.
February second, reaching Yokohama February 19th and
Shanghai, March 1st. It was our aim throughout
the journey to keep in close contact with the field
and crop problems and to converse personally, through
interpreters or otherwise, with the farmers, gardeners
and fruit growers themselves; and we have taken pains
in many cases to visit the same fields or the same
region two, three or more times at different intervals
during the season in order to observe different phases
of the same cultural or fertilization methods as these
changed or varied with the season.

Our first near view of Japan came in the early morning
of February 19th when passing some three miles off
the point where the Pacific passenger steamer Dakota
was beached and wrecked in broad daylight without
loss of life two years ago. The high rounded hills
were clothed neither in the dense dark forest green
of Washington and Vancouver, left sixteen days before,
nor yet in the brilliant emerald such as Ireland’s
hills in June fling in unparalleled greeting to passengers
surfeited with the dull grey of the rolling ocean.
This lack of strong forest growth and even of shrubs
and heavy herbage on hills covered with deep soil,
neither cultivated nor suffering from serious erosion,
yet surrounded by favorable climatic conditions, was
our first great surprise.